Cicatrix
by kangeiko
Summary: It was the Eitreih'hveinn on the lastmoon before her mother's death that Sela remembers most clearly." ST: TNG / ST:TOS original novels Diane Duane & Peter Morwood's The Romulan Way .


Title: Cicatrix

A/N: I loved the look at Rihannsu culture that _The Romulan Way_ offered, and I've long wanted to try my hand at actually writing something set within it. This isn't quite it, but it's close enough. I haven't provided definitions of the bits of Rihannsu tongue I used in this as I think the text should make them fairly self-evident, but please let me know if I've missed something.

*

Upon reflection many years later - as such things inevitably are - it was the _Eitreih'hveinn_ on the lastmoon before her mother's death that Sela remembers most clearly. She had been fast approaching school-able age, and this was the first Farmer's Market that she had been allowed to attend by herself. Well, _technically_ by herself - she had been told in no uncertain terms by her mother to hold the hand of the _hru'hfe_ lest she have her behind warmed upon her homecoming - but Sela wasn't entirely sure that old Thsia actually counted as people. Not by Sela's reckoning, in any case. As it was, she was mighty pleased that she had the run of the place, despite the thrice-damned Thsia, with hand claw-like around her wrist and reedy voice forever calling for her to "slow down, Sela!" Slow down?! When she was a bare stone's throw from the _hlai'hwy_ cage? When there were none of the birds around in the city, and she was not yet allowed in the fields to see them? When any one of them might snap free of their restraints and devour someone in front of her _at any moment_?!

No, Sela would _not_ slow down. Instead, she made a rude noise in the back of her throat and tugged impatiently on Thsia's arm. "Hurry _up_, I want to see the _hlai_, I want to ride one!" She loved _hlai_, loved seeing holos of them and listening to her father promise her day after day that she'd be allowed one as a pet when she was just a little bit older. If they were a bit smaller, Sela was sure that she would have been allowed one ages ago - her father did love to indulge her, and Sela had already perfected a very becoming pout - but the flightless birds were large enough for a nearly-grown woman to ride, and so her father had said no. "Just until you don't need a keeper for it, my little one," he'd said, in a tone that brooked no argument.

Sela had sulked for a full moon over that one.

So, here she was, several moons later - much grown and approaching four years in age and she had been _so_ patient, and - well, she was going to ride the damned _hlai_, or the entire world would hear of it.

Thsai hitched up her sagging tunic in one hand and tugged Sela back to her side with the other, hissing at a street peddler who was waving strips of fried meat in front of them and cooing over Sela's hair. "Out of my way! - you'll see them, Sela, just as I promised, but we're not here for you to ride the _hlai'hwy_! I must purchase food for the household first, then I can indulge you." She was trying to juggle the PADD with the household's monthly purchase list and her kerchief and Sela's hand and a parasol she was trying to keep over Sela's face - or, rather, over Sela's stupid hair, that Sela's stupid mother and Sela's stupid father and the stupid peddler and every stupid Rihannsu she had ever _met_ adored. Yellow, Sela called it, and flat-out refused to accommodate her mother in calling it _buh-lon-duh_. Whoever heard of such a word? It did not sound Rihannsu at all, did it? She blew her hair out of her face, twisted her hand in Thsia's grip - making her almost drop the parasol, she noted with delight - and hated her stupid yellow hair a little more. Moreover, Thsia's answer did not please her at all, and she was already hot and bothered and much put-upon to wait a whole - si- se- several minutes as Thsia fussed over her charge's attire. Who cared what these peddlers thought of her? They were already too in love with her hair to notice her clothes, much less the design of the embroidery across the hem.

All in all, Sela was fast growing very displeased. Her understanding of the situation was that _she_ was the superior, and _she_ was the one who was attending the Farmer's Market. Thsai was supposed to be accompanying _her_ - for the purposes of safety or for parasol-holding, Sela wasn't entirely clear and didn't much care - not the other way around. So what if she needed to buy food for the household? Sela knew that she had to do it some time - it was the head-of-Household's most important task, and Thsai took great pride in the heavy house-sigil knotted in her kerchief - but did she have to do it _now_? _Sela_ was superior, _Sela_ could choose what to do! She twisted her face into a rough approximation of her father's command frown. "I want to ride the _hlai_!" She said insistently and stomped her foot for emphasis. That felt surprisingly good for what she was feeling, and so she stomped it again, and once more. She screwed up her little face into a large angry one, demanding, "I want to ride the _hlai_!" at the top of her voice. She twisted her hand in Thsai's, eager to break the old woman's steel grip. Who would think that a Rihannsu as ancient as Thsai would be _this_ strong? Sela's mother was still in 'the blush of youth', as her father often said fondly, and Sela knew that _she_ was nowhere as strong. "Let _go_, you ancient _kllhe_!"

Given Sela's position and just how much in love with her hair the old _hru'hfe_ was, Thsai's slap at the insult was wholly unexpected.

*

Her face properly flushed with pain and mortification, Sela stayed silent as a prisoner of war as she was tugged from one store to the other. She held her hand mutinously still in Thsai's grip, letting herself be dragged along the walkways and in between the street peddlers. Thsai couldn't keep her out of the way of grabbing hands at the same time as hold the parasol over her head if she had to drag her charge behind her, and Sela took a perverse pleasure in imagining the scolding that Thsai would get when her mother saw Sela's sun-burnt face.

Vegetables of every description: to be delivered at tenday intervals; _hlai'hwy_ meat that Sela would not eat and _hlai'vnau_ that she would; the finest ale that was brightest blue and smelled like distilled urine to Sela who would not kiss her father if he had been drinking it; sweetmeats - _bakh'kha_ and _shu_ and _medinki_ dripping in honey: all this and more, Thsai struck the house-sigil against the bill and left, moving on in search of ever-greater luxurious for her Lord's table, dragging the reluctant Sela behind. "There's no point to buying any of it," Sela said angrily. "I'm never eating again!"

"All the more for the servants, then," Thsai said absently, and reached behind her to grab Sela's shoulders and thrust her forward to face the caged live birds pacing in their enclosure. "Does that mean that you don't want to be riding the _hlaiin_ anymore?"

*

It is an odd thing to think, but Sela is certain now that Thsai's love of Sela's hair is to blame for Sela's mother's death. It is Thsai's love of Sela's yellow hair - uncut and unbound - that let her forgive her young charge her grievous insult so quickly. Years later, Sela can understand that she had been in the wrong to speak so, even though she had believed herself to be superior to Thsai. It had not occurred to her that the subservience that the _hru'hfe_ displayed towards Sela's father might not extend to the littlest members of the Lord's family, and that Thsai could well have had one of the three guards that forever followed Sela around escort her home in disgrace.

It is, thus, Thsai's fault that she forgave young Sela, and let her ride the tame _hlai_ kept in the children's zoo at the Market. If Thsai had not been so soft-hearted, Sela would not have been on the _hlai's_ back but in Thsai's arms when some crazy man shot a disruptor at her. If Thsai had not been so soft-hearted, she would have been lying dead instead of the _hlai_, and Sela cursed her every day that Thsai lived in her ripe old life.

Carried safely in her guard's arms as they raced towards the nearest guarded building and her other guards did noisy things to the gunman outside of Sela's view, Sela examined her hands. Other than a few blood-green scrapes from her fall, she was completely unhurt, of course - the gunman was obviously incompetent, and she had not the least bit of pity for whatever it is that her guards were going to do to him. She hoped that they punched him a lot but, judging by how quickly his screams had stopped, they must have let him go quite quickly. She'd tell her father once she was brought home and have him found again, because - because - the _insides_ of the _hlai_ were _all over_ her _hands_. They were a livid, other-worldly _red_, not a normal colour at all. _Meat_ was red, meat you _ate_ - and she had made the connection that there was some similarity between the birds she was so in love with and the _meat_ that she was so in love with, but it had never before occurred to her that they were one and the same.

Sela threw up.

*

Sela knows that her mother's death is Thsai's fault. It was Thsai who let her ride the _hlai_. It is because of Thsai needing to shop that she got to go to the Market in the first place. It is Thsai's fault that she made the connection between bloody red meat and bloody red animals less than a tenday before Sela's mother took her up in her arms in the middle of the night and ran out of the house.

Older and wiser, she thinks that maybe her mother would not have tried to take her along on her escape attempt if she did not think that she was in danger. Maybe - and this is a hard stone to swallow - maybe her mother was trying to _protect_ her in stealing her from her bed. Maybe she was afraid of what would happen to a little blonde-haired half-Rihannsu girl if the general's star ever fell in the eyes of the Praetorate.

Of course, it doesn't matter now. On her way out of the sleeping house, Tasha Yar had caught her sleeve in the door and it had ripped, scraping along her arm. Four year old Sela who, a few days previous, had first seen evidence that red blood meant animal and, shortly thereafter, _dinner_, took one look at her mother's arm, looked up at her mother's face and at her mother's strange yellow hair, and screamed at the top of her lungs.

Sela blames Thsai, it is true. But it is many years since her mother's death, and many more since Thsai's death, too, and there is no one left to remember it now but Sela herself.

_(if you go with her, what's to stop you from waking up one day and bleeding red?)_

It was Thsai, too, who told her that she was so pretty Thsai could gobble her right up, down to the bone and gristle.

_(how would you like to be a meal, little girl?)_

*

fin


End file.
